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I had seen China and talked to Chinese. The range of policy opinions my counterparts could express, and topics they could engage in, seemed to be extremely limi

I had seen China and talked to Chinese. The range of policy opinions my counterparts could express, and topics they could engage in, seemed to be extremely limited due to what I could only assume was the state of being misinformed (including by omission) by—and fearing retribution from—their own government. The very same factors would, obviously, be limiting their political agency. Do you have a real choice in how to personally treat CCP and Taiwan? As in, do you feel like you can talk about, say, respecting the preference of Taiwan citizens about them being/not being part of China, or about that mysterious May 35th incident, with, say, a taxi driver? Could it be that the population overwhelmingly supports invading Taiwan because this is literally the only appropriate course of action instilled in them by a government in full control of both traditional and social media?

FooBarWidget 5y ago
I think you are overly attributing opinions to censorship, and not giving enough credit to people's ability to form their own opinions despite censorship. The hypothesis that Chinese opinions are overwhelmingly the product of censorship and media control has already been debunked by Harvard research. There is a paper which shows that censorship does not steer opinions in a certain direction. Instead, censorship's goal is to silence and dampen movements. Both pro-government and anti-government comments are equally censored -- the actual criteria is whether those comments have the potential to become viral. The inability of censorship to steer opinions, is corroborated by a recent essay "How Chinese liberals lost the young generation" https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkgij3g https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkgij3g This essay states that for a long time, the popular opinion was that CCP is bad, and and that western-style democracy is superior. It also states that censorship did nothing to change people's opinion on this topic because reality is stronger than censorship/propaganda. It then states that all of this has changed in the past 5-10 years: the CCP has become popular nowadays, again not because of censorship or propaganda, but because in reality they've actually improved and done a good job.
- goblin89 5y ago
  My first question wasn’t rhetorical, knowing where you stand could help any further discussion, should it occur, be meaningful. What you instead wrote in response makes sense to me only under the assumption that people have a choice—to have CCP or not to have CCP—and that they choose to have CCP; if you’re saying that assumption is correct then we have sufficiently differing views of reality (perhaps you know something I don’t, etc.) that we’d be talking past each other. Newspaper pieces on how %opposition% is %something negative%—written as if it was somehow relevant and even vitally important, creating an illusion of pluralism in absence of any real possibility for the reader to effect any change—were a thing in USSR from what I hear; based on your summary of the essay I smell the same old fish wrapped in a fresh newspaper.
  - FooBarWidget 5y ago
    All right, sorry if I misinterpreted you. For the question on whether you can discuss such things with a taxi driver: yes. The authorities don't care about that sort of thing until it escalates (or think think it will escalate) into a bigger movement. What you say next, about people only being able to choose between having CCP and not having CCP, was not the point I was making, but it is something I think. I don't understand however why you then say that we'd be talking past each other. Only having the choice between having CCP and not having CCP is simple reality. History did not give us another choice. The Qing was weak and corrupt. The KMT was corrupt. No other governing movement in the past 100 year succeeded. The west doesn't have a good track record of installing functioning, prosperous democracies in foreign lands (see e.g. middle east). The CCP is literally all we have, and the past 30 years of CCP is also literally the most successful period in the past 3000 years. What is written in the essay corroborates roughly with what I hear in social circles. Whenever I talk to Chinese people on the western Internet, most of them either have roughly similar views. I also follow a bunch of foreigners who live in China, and they too corroborate roughly this view. Last year, the government built sewers for my wife's grandmother, and installed a toilet for her (she lives in the country side and only had a literal mud hole in the grond as a toilet with no sewer). They gave her health insurance. She is overjoyed. She isn't happy because of propaganda, she's happy because she is actually satisifed with what the government provides.

FooBarWidget 5y ago

I think you are overly attributing opinions to censorship, and not giving enough credit to people's ability to form their own opinions despite censorship. The hypothesis that Chinese opinions are overwhelmingly the product of censorship and media control has already been debunked by Harvard research. There is a paper which shows that censorship does not steer opinions in a certain direction. Instead, censorship's goal is to silence and dampen movements. Both pro-government and anti-government comments are equally censored -- the actual criteria is whether those comments have the potential to become viral. The inability of censorship to steer opinions, is corroborated by a recent essay "How Chinese liberals lost the young generation" https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkgij3g https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkgij3g This essay states that for a long time, the popular opinion was that CCP is bad, and and that western-style democracy is superior. It also states that censorship did nothing to change people's opinion on this topic because reality is stronger than censorship/propaganda. It then states that all of this has changed in the past 5-10 years: the CCP has become popular nowadays, again not because of censorship or propaganda, but because in reality they've actually improved and done a good job.

goblin89 5y ago
My first question wasn’t rhetorical, knowing where you stand could help any further discussion, should it occur, be meaningful. What you instead wrote in response makes sense to me only under the assumption that people have a choice—to have CCP or not to have CCP—and that they choose to have CCP; if you’re saying that assumption is correct then we have sufficiently differing views of reality (perhaps you know something I don’t, etc.) that we’d be talking past each other. Newspaper pieces on how %opposition% is %something negative%—written as if it was somehow relevant and even vitally important, creating an illusion of pluralism in absence of any real possibility for the reader to effect any change—were a thing in USSR from what I hear; based on your summary of the essay I smell the same old fish wrapped in a fresh newspaper.
- FooBarWidget 5y ago
  All right, sorry if I misinterpreted you. For the question on whether you can discuss such things with a taxi driver: yes. The authorities don't care about that sort of thing until it escalates (or think think it will escalate) into a bigger movement. What you say next, about people only being able to choose between having CCP and not having CCP, was not the point I was making, but it is something I think. I don't understand however why you then say that we'd be talking past each other. Only having the choice between having CCP and not having CCP is simple reality. History did not give us another choice. The Qing was weak and corrupt. The KMT was corrupt. No other governing movement in the past 100 year succeeded. The west doesn't have a good track record of installing functioning, prosperous democracies in foreign lands (see e.g. middle east). The CCP is literally all we have, and the past 30 years of CCP is also literally the most successful period in the past 3000 years. What is written in the essay corroborates roughly with what I hear in social circles. Whenever I talk to Chinese people on the western Internet, most of them either have roughly similar views. I also follow a bunch of foreigners who live in China, and they too corroborate roughly this view. Last year, the government built sewers for my wife's grandmother, and installed a toilet for her (she lives in the country side and only had a literal mud hole in the grond as a toilet with no sewer). They gave her health insurance. She is overjoyed. She isn't happy because of propaganda, she's happy because she is actually satisifed with what the government provides.